FILM PROFILE: BARRY
JENKINS, WRITER AND DIRECTOR OF "MEDICINE FOR MELANCHOLY"
Filmmaker Barry Jenkins last week in San
Francisco, his home for four years now. The director talked about his
feature
film debut "Medicine For Melancholy", which won the Audience Award at last
year's San Francisco International Film
Festival and awards at numerous other festivals. The film is now playing
in San Francisco at the Embarcadero Center.
(Photo: Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com)
Despairing The Lack Of Diversity In San
Francisco, Via Barry Jenkins' Feature Film Debut
By
Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com
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Thursday, March 12, 2009
SAN FRANCISCO, California --
Before beginning the abbreviated conversation he points out that his middle name
is Moore. Barry Moore Jenkins. "Very unusual," he comments, as if to
preempt the same comment from his interviewer.
For filmmaker Barry Jenkins, a down-to-earth and unassuming kind of guy, it took
the break-up of an interracial relationship for him to see San Francisco in a
very different light than he previously had. "Yeah . . . I moved here
(from Miami, where he was born and raised), I was in that relationship and I
really felt like the relationship buffered me from really seeing San Francisco,
seeing it on its own terms, you know, emotionally engaging in the city. So
when the relationship ended I really felt like I was in a completely different
city."
Mr. Jenkins, wearing a faded blue jeans shirt and denim blue jeans, said that he
became "hypersensitive" to the issues that his film, "Medicine For Melancholy"
raises. "I really just, began to really investigate and look at San
Francisco and how it was making me feel. Some of it was coming from this
heartache [of the break-up of the relationship] but a good deal of it was just
really, sort of noticing that 'wow, I'm walking down the street . . . and I
don't see many people who look like me walking down the street."
Late last week Barry Jenkins said hello to the City that he has loved from afar
and now lives in and talked about his feature film directing debut "Medicine For
Melancholy", which showed at the San Francisco International Film Festival last
year, where it received the Audience Award, and is currently playing in San
Francisco at the Embarcadero and in several other U.S. cities. The film,
which Mr. Jenkins also wrote, is about two young black people in San Francisco
who initially get acquainted during a one-night stand and then get through the
next 24 hours or so in the city, explores the characters Micah (Wyatt Cenac) and
Jo' (Tracey Heggins) as they try to find their bearings in a city that only has
a seven percent black population.
"Actually I heard the other day it's down to about 5.8 now, so it's steadily
declining," Mr. Jenkins said of the shrinking black residency in a city prided
for its diversity.
"It's complicated -- it's a complex issue," Mr. Jenkins acknowledged.
"I think the redevelopment policies of decades ago -- I think that's what really
sort of began this exodus of people who are African-American people from the
city." The director, who has also made short films ("My Josephine" and
"Little Brown Boy"), talked about an example of existing in part of a city that
seems completely alien (even to many of San Francisco's white residents), an
example his interviewer referenced. "And the thing that happens is, you're
right, you begin to notice it -- you were [at] the bus stop in the Marina -- and
not only do you notice it but everyone notices it. And it's like, whoa --
it's like you're out in the jungle and [here you are]. You know, what the
hell are you doing here? I think that has to -- a, it has to affect the
overall emotional or spiritual makeup of the city. The other thing it
definitely affects is people like you and myself who walk these streets everyday
and see fewer and fewer people who look like us."
The word "diversity" means different things to different parts of San
Francisco's population, as does the word "community", which connotes one thing
to some and something else in others. In the 1950s most of the city's
black population was concentrated in the Fillmore District, a thriving haven of
black businesses, blues and jazz music establishments, and by the end of that
decade many were ushered out through gentrification, and found themselves being
priced out of the City, moving to the East Bay and such cities as Oakland.
Today there are remnants of blacks, poor, and working class whites who live in
and around the Fillmore but otherwise, San Francisco is a different city today
than it was decades ago, with a dotcom era influx that has also changed the
older, predominantly white Marina District. The Marina was once a bastion
for senior Italian-American residents, whose generations of families made that
part of the city their home. The 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, which caused
a number of deaths in the Marina, also displaced many of its elderly citizens,
later populated and replaced by a younger, new-moneyed white urban professional
swagger (some would say pretention) which has substantially changed the tenor,
mood and perception of the Marina over the years.
Tracey Heggins as Jo' and Wyatt Cenac as
Micah on the streets of San
Francisco in Barry Jenkins' debut feature film "Medicine For Melancholy".
(Photo: IFC Films)
"Medicine For Melancholy" brings the atmosphere of a city whose soul has changed
a great deal. The film is punctuated by a housing rights committee meeting
in which members urgently discuss the issues that have led to an exodus of poor
whites and blacks from San Francisco. Today, for example, the Hunters
Point and Bayview Districts, the latter of which is quickly changing, remain
predominantly black and poor, with crime as an lingering issue affecting the
District's populous, which isn't able to afford other areas of San Francisco yet
are able to live good lives while one or two percent of the Hunters Point
District's youth engage in incorrect behaviors.
Harkening back to the relationship with a woman of another race Mr. Jenkins
commented that it ended "not because we were of different races but because we
were different people." To that end, Mr. Jenkins' film features two
characters of the same race who have a tenuous existence together as well as
with San Francisco itself. Audience expectations about the race of the
characters may lead them to make assumptions but the director makes it clear
that things aren't so -- pardon the pun -- black and white. "I think the
issues (between them and the philosophies they hold) become more complex, they
become more dynamic."
The director lauded Mr. Cenac and Miss Heggins for their work in the film.
"Both Wyatt and Tracey were from L.A. We tried to find some actors from
here but the pool of performers here just wasn't large enough. When you
have an African-American population that's as small as it is in San Francisco --
we just couldn't find African-American actors to be in the film." The
financial constraints of the film's production also meant that Mr. Cenac and
Miss Heggins couldn't be paid for rehearsal time, despite their membership in
the Screen Actors Guild. "They both got here twelve hours before we shot
the first shot in the film," Mr. Jenkins revealed.
Mr. Jenkins lived in the Marina temporarily while "Medicine For Melancholy" was
being made, and both actors spent a lot of their time there as well.
"Medicine For Melancholy" was literally shot on the fly in HD (with the
Panasonic HVX 720p) and in sequence all over San Francisco over 15 days in
November of 2007 and post production was complete on January 1, 2008. The
film cost roughly $13,000 to make. Mr. Jenkins, who referred to "Medicine"
as a "do-it-yourself film", was hugely appreciative of Graham Leggat's efforts
in helping to bring "Medicine" to a larger audience in San Francisco. Mr.
Leggat is the Executive Director of the San Francisco Film Society, whose annual
San Francisco International Film Festival runs in late April through the first
week of May. This year's Festival runs from April 22 through May 7.
Before any new projects arise Barry Jenkins is occupied with a nighttime
vocation while working during the day: "I'm writing. And it's cool because
I have agents now. And so there are some bigger stories I kind of want to
tell. And I'm talking to people about possibly getting some funding to
tell (them). So it's a good time right now. And it all stems from
the very pure motivation of, 'I want to make a film with friends about my life
and about my city', and to have these very positive things come out as a
byproduct of that is just great."
Related: Trailer for "Medicine For Melancholy"
Related: The Popcorn Reel Film Review of "Medicine For Melancholy"
Copyright The Popcorn Reel. PopcornReel.com. 2009. All Rights
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